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Published: January 8th 2007
blog by Dave BOLIVIA
We had no idea what to expect from
Bolivia. It was one of those countries that we had pencilled in to our world trip whilst looking at the map without much thought really. It made a convenient short break en route between the mountains, ruins, adventures and exertions of
Peru, and the spectacular geography we would experience in southern
Chile. There was a touch of the unknown about it which attracted us.
Having left
Puno by bus, we only had a couple of hour drive until we reached the border crossing point, or so we thought. As is fairly common in these parts an impromptu strike had closed several of the roads around
Lake Titicaca, causing our driver to go 'off road' in order to avoid the barricades. The barricades where made of cars, vans and people blocking the way, not to mention piles of stones thrown in the road to prevent vehicles from passing.
Not only did this cost us a bit of time, but also a whole bunch of finger nails were lost as we jarred and toppled our way across the fields and wasteland in order to circumvent the trouble. Fortunately
Copacabana Bay
Copacabana, Boliviathese strikes are pretty common and are not menacing or violent in the least, so there is rarely ever a permanent impasse.
Copacabana & Isla del Sol
Having been delayed only slightly we arrived via the usual red-tape at the border to the lake shore town of
Copacabana in the early afternoon. Here we were picked up by our pre-booked hotel and taken back there to unload our bags. Given what we had spent we were less than impressed with the agencies accommodation choice for us. However, being tired and short of time we decided to defer any sort of complaining until we had the energy.
It then transpired that a Malaysian couple we had met in
Puno, Kian and Irene, who now live and work in
London, were staying at the same hotel for almost nothing compared to what we had payed. There were going to be words !!
Part of our visit in
Copacabana was to see
Isla del Sol (Island of the Sun), another permanent island in
Lake Titicaca. There would be a guide included to explain the history of the place. Having arrived late due to the strikes, we barely had enough time
to scoff a lunch and glug a coke before we were hastily being driven to the harbour in order to meet our boat. The guide was a nice enough chap who did his best, although his English was limited. Limited to nothing. Bronia definitely earned her money that afternoon as she translated for me and to a Japanese tourist who had paid for a similar deal.
The boat trip to the island was tedious and uncomfortable as we sat cramped in the lower cabin of the boat unable to move and inhaling the scent of the local people the whole way. It seems they don't wash too often, and the relief of all the tourists was palpable as we stepped out of the enclosed decks into the fresh air.
Once on the island however, we had a couple of hours to explore the tiny villages and places of interest. We climbed the famous
Inca Steps that led up the slopes and past all the pre-Inca terraces to one of the islands peaks. The views from the summit of the island were incredible. From the slopes we could see the shores of
Lake Titicaca including
Copacabana, as well as
Isla de la Luna (Island of the Moon), another famous island populated by the Incas. The sun and the moon were heavily worshipped by the Incas and
Isla del Sol was held a special place for all Incas. They believed that this was the birthplace of the Inca race because legend told of a man and a woman rising out of
Lake Titicaca here - a kind of Adam and Eve story about the Incas.
As we made the winding walk around the south of the island and made our way back to the boat, we were able to visit an ancient farmhouse and priests temple complex that still stands here. It is thought to have been originally built by the Aymaras before the Incas took over and made adaptations later in history.
There were two things worthy of note about the return boat trip to
Copacabana, the first being that the 'captain' of the boat (the fella steering it) was practically asleep with his foot on the motorised rudder the whole way - even whilst we were winding our way through some very treacherous and slender gaps between rocks (see pic).
The second interesting thing was
a build up of huge thunder clouds off our starboard bow as we chugged back. We were sitting on the top deck in the open air as we noticed the pitch black sky growing ever closer until it became fascinating to watch the huge forks of lightning hitting the lake in the distance. We took photos of the changing clouds and sunshine piercing through (see pic) and soon it became touch and go as to whether we would beat the storm to shore. We did, by just a few minutes.
Our guide then showed us round some of the buildings of note in this sleepy little town, the huge Moorish cathedral being the main one. It is famous for miles around for its supposedly miraculous virgin Mary statue. This inspires people to come from quite a distance every weekend to buy blessed flowers and ornaments with which they decorate the front of their vans and cars for good luck. The cars look like they are part of a wedding convoy and it's fascinating to see (see pic). We assumed the village must have been built around the imposing white structure of the cathedral because it seemed substantially older than
all the surrounding architecture.
Shortly after our visit to the cathedral, the heavens opened, and we decided to shelter in a restaurant with a glass or two of red wine, before meeting Kian and Irene in order to compare notes about
South America and offer travel advice to one another. This done, we flopped into bed, and were soon reaching for the earplugs - it was one of 'those' hotels. Great.
When we awoke in the morning we decided to complain to the booking agency about our hotel, if only to let them know that we were aware of the giant chunk of commission they had taken from us. I unleashed Bronia on them and before long they must have been whimpering for mercy because things started to happen.
As we returned to the hotel, we were confronted by the owner, who was deeply offended that we'd complained (the agency had been in touch). It took a while to convince him that his hotel was fine (in a certain price bracket) but that we'd paid too much. The hotel owner even sympathised with our plight, and promptly set about helping us to claim a free night in
La Paz from the tour company. What a nice man.
La Paz
The bus journey to
La Paz was uneventful, save for the ferry crossing during which we crossed a small section of the lake in a motor boat, while our bus (complete with bags) crossed on a precarious looking floating platform. As we arrived we were able to look down on
La Paz from the road. Quite a sight - not the prettiest, but still one to behold and majestic in many ways.
La Paz is a city within a valley. It is mostly made of red brick, unlike the rest of the country that seems predominantly made of mud brick. These red brick constructions, once again most of them in a semi-completed state with the now familiar reinforced steel poles sticking out of the roofs, are everywhere. The buildings spill over the cliff side, hugging every available nook and cranny, and tumble down one on top of the other into the valley and then rise up the hillside across the ravine to the peaks again.
It's like looking at a red cubed tapestry and quite an incredible view, if not a little depressing to see
such scarring on such a beautiful backdrop. On a clear day, from the edge of these cliffs and certain high points in the city you can see brilliant white snow peaks of the high Andean mountains surrounding us. Truly stunning.
Potentially,
La Paz will rank as one of the busiest places we've seen in
South America. There were people and vehicles everywhere. We had been dropped off a couple of hundred metres up the road from our 'free' hotel so we trudged there with our bags. Only later did we learn that we had been blindly Gringo-ing (new word) our way through a really rough part of town. We have probably unknowingly done that a few times in various big cities but on this occasion somebody told us. The hotel wasn't the greatest, but we could hardly complain again. It was free (which made it superb in my eyes) and it would do for the night.
Once we'd figured out what there was to do in
Bolivia, we were left with some interesting and ultimately frustrating choices. The nature of our trip made it impossible to see everything on our list. There would have to be sacrifices. The
Christmas period would also determine where we would go as certain luxury/tourist coach companies would be
'closed for maintenance' until the New Year. This was obviously a pseudonym for
'having some time off at Christmas'.
The number one tourist experience in
Bolivia is the
Salar de Uyuni, which is a giant expanse of salt flats and lagoons in the south west of the country. Unfortunately there was nothing but a limited local bus service running this 12 hour stretch of muddy, bumpy and downright dangerous road. We decided not to risk it, especially as we didn't have time for the three day tour that is the accepted minimum for a visit here, we only had one day to spare after factoring in everywhere else we wanted to see.
We figured that given our options the most realistic achievement would be to head somewhere on one of the main routes and hole up there for Christmas until normal services started running again. We soon decided this
"somewhere" would be the
Unesco World Heritage Town of
Sucre, a 12 hour trip away, also on a local bus but on a better and safer road.
Sucre
Before we left for
Sucre we were left with a day or two with which to become acquainted with
La Paz. Our first task was to move hotels, which was achieved with a minimum of fuss by walking in and out of a few hotels in the area, checking rooms and enquiring into prices. We ended up in a lovely place with a safer, cleaner and friendlier feel to it and a wonderful cafe and internet bar at street level. Upon further investigation we realised that we were now in the heart of the traveller oriented part of town, such as it is. It didn't take us long to adopt the cafe attached to our hotel as the most comfortable and pleasant spot for people watching, relaxing and catching up with emails.
The huge
Church of San Fransisco was opposite our new place and it dominated the area for quite a distance with its distinctive domed towers and huge external plaza. This plaza though, along with every spare piece of pavement or road, was clogged with market stalls and impromptu shops which we gathered were specific to Christmas time. Whilst the markets were an interesting insight into Bolivian life, we found them extremely
prohibitive to our movements by foot in the city, and we pretty soon gave up to a degree.
La Paz was building up for Christmas celebrations and the streets were heaving. We did, however, spent some hours walking through them, pushing through the throngs of people and hugging our camera and wallet tightly.
Within easy walking distance of us were lots of great little cobbled streets, climbing up the steep slopes of the city, filled with shops selling merchandise of all kinds. We browsed the places selling ceramics, textiles and paintings, venturing into the labyrinth of streets until we started to notice a change in the nature of the merchandise on display. First we noticed on increase in the number of idols and statues for sale, until that was all you could see and the smell of incense rose in the air. Then we started to pick up an altogether more sinister change.
Poking from the stalls were the bodies of stuffed animals, such as wild cats and armadillos. We could also see various furs, pelts and jars of things we couldn't identify, but most disturbing of all, by quite a distance, were the llama foetuses that we
abundant everywhere if you looked carefully. Ignorance is bliss in terms of how these things are obtained.
We had stumbled into the city's famous
Witches Market, which supplies all kinds of 'medicines' for shamanic use and are held as ancient remedies for various ailments. Much as we respect the beliefs and traditions of the locals here, there is still something quite disturbing to us about there being dozens of dried foetuses hanging up in shop doorways by their necks.
Feeling like we wanted/needed a dose of normality we found another coffee bar (funny how we can always home in on one of these! ), and we spent a while watching the people pass by before heading off to the bus station.
Our bus to
Sucre would set off at 9pm and would run overnight, arriving at 8am. Because of the huge demand for tickets at this time of year we could not travel directly to
Sucre. We had to settle for
Potosi, an old silver mining town and the highest in Bolivia at 4,200metres, about two hours away from where we would catch a cheap taxi for the remaining distance.
The bus journey was a story
in itself, which I shall attempt to truncate in true 'Dave' fashion. When we arrived at the bus station to board, it was mayhem. There were people everywhere with various large packages, presumably filled with Christmas goodies, and huge holiday suitcases by the half dozen. It caused considerable delay as everybody had to queue whilst the belongings where labelled and then piled up in the corner of a room for loading. That was between the large stretches of staff apathy during which they decided to chat amongst themselves or on their mobile phones instead of attending the hundreds of people lined up at their desk with baggage to check in.
Once the passengers' belongings had been stuffed into the bulging luggage hold, we were finally underway with a full bus - or so we thought. After approximately ten minutes we pulled up at the side of the road and several more people clambered on board. It turned out that if you looked hard enough at the back of the bus, there where some minuscule gaps that clearly represented empty seats. Interestingly our new travelling companions were native country folk who were laden with smelly bundles, huge packages, and dirty
clothing - oh and sleeping children. Anything that could not be legitimately accommodated in the compartments or seats went in the aisle, including people. It smelt like a stable - our own little nativity scene. Fun.
With the native women, who didn't have legitimate seats, complaining about the other local Bolivian passengers who had actually paid for theirs, we set off properly. My enjoyment of the trip had reached its zenith
(heavy sarcasm) when all of a sudden the lady in front of me reclined her seat, which hit me between the lower stomach and the upper thigh. I'm sure I don't have to elaborate on the exact spot. You can imagine my joy. She had the only seat on the bus that went back as far as that, and she was determined to make the best of it, even if it meant that she crushed the person with probably the longest legs on the bus. Bronia asked her politely in Spanish if she would raise the seat in line with everyone else's and there was much muttering before raising it an inch or two. Still, she still slept with her head practically in my lap all night.
Mercifully, at some point we both fell asleep, despite being squished into ridiculously small spaces. There are few words to describe the euphoria of arriving in
Potosi bus station the next morning and realising that ones legs are still functional. From here we jumped in a shared taxi and continued to our chosen hotel in
Sucre without further incident.
Sucre was exactly what we had been hoping for as a place to celebrate Christmas. Our hotel room overlooked the central square from its second floor balcony. As far as we could see every building was a Spanish colonial relic in whitewash with black metallic balcony railings, window frames and gutters. With its mountain backdrop, it was a picturesque as any town or city we had yet seen in
South America and would provide us with the perfect base in which to enjoy the festive season.
Around every corner we would find a small boutique restaurant, one of the chocolate shops that seem very popular in this country, or a delicatessen. These places, interspersed with Internet cafes, launderettes, and off-licences, meant that we were in the ideal location for this time of year. Couple that with the fact that
our hotel was a beautiful romantic old building, and the rooms were complete with English cable-TV and you can see why we thought we were in our own version of heaven.
Christmas here did provide its quirks. We noticed as soon as we arrived that there seemed to be an inordinate amount of beggars and street dwellers here, all dressed in the garb that is typical to the rural Andean enclaves of this country. As the volume of these people increased we soon realised that in Catholic society alms are distributed to the poor during religious festivals and that the folk from the country were flocking en mass to the city in order to obtain whatever free goods they could acquire.
As each hour towards Christmas drew closer more and more poor peasants lined the streets, the squares and doorways sitting in groups of five to fifteen with half naked children running around and following us as we walked by with hands outstretched.
The appearance of small trucks to the public squares laden with clothing and food to distribute to the needy soon became a daily event, and the ensuing crowd of Andean beggars that had sprinted
to the scene became a regular occurrence. Of course in principle, this donation to the poor is one of the noblest ideals that Christmas represents, but we found that unfortunately the city was poorly equipped to accommodate such a volume of population increase, and that it was left partly devastated in terms of sanitation and refuse.
It may seem harsh to be critical of the under privileged but we both were left amazed at the lack of regard for their environment or themselves. Even amongst the abject poverty of
India, we had rarely seen children and infants abandoned to such dangerous levels of unpleasant human waste and hygienic neglect. By Boxing Day the stench on the streets was incredible. It smelt like a sewer and evidence of what was causing the smell was everywhere.
As the handing out of money to those that beg is never encouraged by charities and the donation of sweets is equally damaging because they have no level of dental care in the country (it is not uncommon to see a child of six or seven years old with black rotting teeth) Bronia and I only contributed by donating some bars of hotel soap
that we had accumulated as we'd travelled. It seemed like the thing they lacked most from our point of view.
As far as we were concerned it really didn't feel like Christmas for Bronia and I despite the fairy lights in the main square and the Christmas trees in the windows of the houses. For us, the temperature felt all wrong, it was hot and summerlike. There was none of the usual rush in the shops or the cheesy Christmas carols playing everywhere you go. Plus, there wasn't any roast turkey on offer and the TV shows didn't reflect the time of year.
It's funny how much your own family Christmas tradition plays such a role in how you view Christmas as an adult and without it, it just feels odd. At one point this made us really homesick which is something we have rarely felt. To alleviate this we raided the local supermarket for a few packets of Pringles, some reasonably expensive chocolates, a six pack of beers and a bottle of red wine. This would be our special Christmas stash.
In an attempt to join in with the locals and feel a little more festive
we decided to attend Catholic midnight mass on Christmas eve. It was quite an interesting experience and we're really glad we went. Each family brought their effigies of the baby Jesus, that they keep at home in a little shrine, into the church so that it could receive a blessing. The service was held in Spanish, candles and incense were burned, and the church was packed so that we were seated near the back of the cathedral. There was also a choir that sang hymns from the mezzanine. The atmosphere was great and we left shortly before 2am and walked hand in hand back to the hotel feeling that although it wasn't a "normal" Christmas, it was still a great memory from this trip.
We woke on Christmas morning fairly late and phoned our families. Our moods buoyed by this contact with home we then proceeded to demolish our stockpile of goodies in front of the afternoon blockbuster movie in true festive fashion. We had found a brilliant little backpackers cafe called
"Joyride" which stayed open for Christmas dinner, so we made use of it for the evening, returning to the hotel room happy and well fed. We had
made a nice little private foreign Christmas for ourselves.
There was no time for the traditional relaxation on Boxing Day, as we had pre-organised a cheap internal flight for ourselves back to
La Paz, if only for an overnight stay, which was lucky because the public transport system was still largely disrupted and we didn't fancy going totally native on local buses again.
This was the first of three flights in three days as we left
Bolivia for the slender west coastal strip of land that is
Chile. It's a shame we didn't have a little longer in
Bolivia but we've a lot to fit into an incredibly short time.
We've heard so many good things about the Chilean hospitality and scenery, so we were looking forward to the next stage, we'll let you know...........
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David Baker
non-member comment
Merry Christmas - a bit late
Sucre sounds great however, the journey there could qualify for the Guinness Book of Records by the sound of it. Take care - see ya later this year. David (good blog by the way)